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ten accompanied by Rahul and Priyanka. This transformed the campaign into a real contest
and revived the Congress's morale, but it was not enough to stop a BJP-led coalition from
winning the election.
To begin with, Sonia was far from effective as a politician, though she had sufficient per-
sonality and dynastic charisma to pull political crowds and maybe votes across India. 2 She
was a poor speaker in both Hindi and English. Years later, she still delivers her English-lan-
guage speeches and statements as if each carefully enunciated word and phrase is a hurdle
to be jumped. Her biggest misjudgement came in April 1999 when the BJP-led coalition
government lost a confidence vote in parliament. Support had been withdrawn by one of
its allies, the AIADMK from Tamil Nadu, whose leader, Jayalalitha, had grown close to
Sonia. Within days, Sonia met President
K.R. Narayanan and, standing in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan, proudly pro-
claimed to massed television cameras, 'We have 272' (the number of MPs needed for a ma-
jority in parliament). 3 The television sound byte acted as a catalyst for growing criticism,
sharpened by the media and the BJP, that this foreign-born member of the Gandhi clan who
had not proved herself in any way as a politician or party leader, was trying to vault into the
prime minister's post. A backlash in urban areas, encouraged by the BJP, ridiculed the idea
of India, as a country of one billion people, turning to a foreigner. 4 Possible allies refused
to line up behind her in a confidence vote, and the power bid failed, leading to a general
election later in 1999, which the BJP won.
After the election, with the BJP-led coalition back in power with a larger majority,
Gandhi remained a remote figure. She was shielded by advisers, who seemed nervous to
expose her to public scrutiny lest her limited mastery of language and public affairs, and
lack of experience, were again revealed as they had been with the '272' claim. Slowly,
however, she grew in stature and, haltingly and falteringly, began to lead the Congress in
parliament and develop some charisma.
Sonia might have faced continuing challenges of the sort mounted by Pawar and Sangma
in May 1999 when they broke away and formed a new party, if three leading Congress
politicians of her own generation had not died within 15 months of each other while she
was growing into the Congress leadership. Rajesh Pilot, who was considering standing
against her in the party presidential elections that were to be held in November 2000, 5 was
killed in a car crash five months earlier, aged 55. Madhavrao Scindia (56) died in a plane
crash in September 2001 and Jitendra Prasada (62) did not recover in January 2001 from
a brain haemorrhage. Their deaths robbed the Congress of its next generation of leaders,
leaving no one near the top of the party who could challenge the dynasty.
Pilot told David Loyn, a BBC correspondent who was then based in Delhi and knew him
well, that he had asked Narasimha Rao towards the end of 1999 whether he should stand
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